Displaced Realities features works by three Asian artists: Ayoung Kim(Korea), James Chen-Feng Kao (Taiwan/USA) and Ma Hongjie (China).
The Artists’ practices navigate contemporary dilemmas of human existence. They engage directly with the ascendancy of a mentality that has originated in the west and has today become typical of human civilisation; that of the radical secularisation of human life. We live in a world that is obsessed with progress, which as a secondary manifestation is leaving individuals with a sense of dislocation and displacement within new and native environments. Within this exhibition, the Artists reveal the effect and fragility of a status quo defined by change.
Ayoung Kim’s work ‘Minima Memoria’ is a series of photographs concerned with headlines describing serious crimes, suicides, mysterious incidents and disasters. The Artist attempts to bring new meaning to each tragedy by producing imagery taken in her own environments – her native Korea and her adopted UK – then through cutting and pasting Kim creates 3D models to reconstruct each scenario. The Artist uses to effect disproportionate scale, adding shadows to create angular perspectives and cutting out detail to deconstruct the meaning of the original images. The meticulously crafted photomontage works provide sets for staging the artist herself, a character dislocated and displaced, finding echoes of her own experience in disasters that happened just around the corner, or to girls whose experience as students abroad mirrors her own (until the moment they disappeared).
Born in Seoul, Korea, in 1979, Ayoung Kim has completed a BA in Photography (Honours) from the London College of Communication(University of the Arts London) and a Masters of Arts in Fine Art at the Chelsea College of Art and Design. She has exhibited in France, Germany, Hungary and notably at the Saatchi Gallery in London in 2009, and is the recipient of the 2009/2010 Young Art Frontier Grant from the Arts Council of Korea. 2010 was been a particularly successful year for the Artist winning The British Institution Award at the Royal Academy of the Arts and the Flash Forward – Emerging Photographers Award from the Canadian Magenta Foundation. She was also selected as a finalist in the Future Map Prize at the University of the Arts London and for Bloomberg New Contemporaries. This year Kim will undertake a residency at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, supported by the Arts Council of Korea. Kim currently lives and works in London.
James Chen-Feng Kao is an emerging Taiwan-born American artist with an integrated practice in drawing, sculpture and installation. Through his work he questions his own identity, of which is a blend of Asian and American cultures. The Artist claims his work ‘lies in the moment of interaction between the viewers and the work’, when the viewer deciphers the images and concludes that what is seen is not what was expected. In order to achieve this, Kao creates graphic characters using ink strokes inspired by Chinese calligraphy. The characters are placed in large-scale format drawings, then abstracted and juxtaposed with photo-transferred elements to present narrative concepts. The multiplicity of the characters and the lack of any one specific character reflect the Artist’s self-perceived notion of being a constant stranger2), dislocated and displaced.
The artist earned a Bachelor of Arts Degrees in Art Practice at the University of California, Berkeley, and in 2008 completed his Master of Arts. Chen-Feng Kao currently lives and works in New York.
Hongjie Ma presents selected works from his latest series of photographs, Family Stuff ; a project started in 2005 in collaboration with fellow photographer Qinjung Huang, portraying ‘family dwellings turned inside out : furniture, accessories, animals and all, neatly presented – in the front yards. Ma aims to portray Chinese families from different ethnic backgrounds and regions in order to chronicle average Chinese living conditions today. China is an immense country with diverse terrain and dramatically differing lives according to geographic location. The Artist takes portraits that intentionally reveal how his subjects inhabit their environments and how these environments mould their lives.
Despite the geographical differences in each photograph, the works show a common simplicity and unpretentiousness of the average modern Chinese household, which is interestingly devoid of political paraphernalia that might have been amongst the possessions a few decades ago. Thus, above all, the Artists want to show the profound transition that China is undergoing, which is particularly revealing in the everyday lives of normal families. In the Confucian tradition family is considered as institution4), and family life in rural areas still represents identity rather than style, as opposed to homes in Chinese cities where existence and livelihood has been superseded by Western ways of life and materialism. The Artist is concerned with portraying China from its authentic side, chronicling the reality of the country’s rural majority.
The possessions photographed have become symbols of a people dislocated and displaced from their authentic reality, with ‘time’ being the protagonist. Each photograph shows its effects and relativity: aged houses soon to be replaced by modern buildings which are already looming in the background, it presents its manifestations in TVs and refrigerators alongside traditional furniture and cooking utensils.
Hongjie Ma is a photo-journalist who has been documenting Chinese life for over 15 years. His work has been published in national and international publications. To date part of the Family Stuff series has been shown in Beijing in 2007 and Paris Photo 2011. The project is due for completion this year and a book will be published of the entire series.
By Sascha Gianella
